Mike Long (American businessman)

Long first gained CEO experience at Continuum, a "producer of packaged back-office software for insurance companies."[4] He began as a director, then moved on to CEO. In order to gain a foothold in the American insurance market, Long focused Continuum on foreign markets.

Then Long served for four years as the CEO of WebMD, where he concentrated on the organization's serving as a network linking "patients, hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and pharmacies that would help manage people's health care...."[4] Long envisioned cutting $300 billion in waste from the healthcare industry, but what he "saw as waste others saw as income."[4] Long's objectives for WebMD would meet significant resistance from the industry, and were never able to match his aspirations. WebMD exists now as an easily accessible encyclopedia of health-related information.[4]

After WebMD, Long focused on spending time with his family. Then in 2001 he was offered the CEO position at Homestore.com, a company in the throes of accounting difficulties and declining stock valuations.[5] The company, with $40 million in cash, was spending $50 million a quarter. To restructure Homestore, Long recruited WebMD and Contiuum executives as chief financial officer and chief operating officer. With morale at Homestore sinking and other companies luring away top talent, Long acted to halt the losses. On his first day as CEO, Long spoke before 700 Homestore employees outside the company's California headquarters. He was candid about the difficulties the company had endured and those they faced. He asked the employees to support him in reinvigorating Homestore, His restructuring began by shedding acquisitions and renegotiating contracts with AOL and Cendant. With flexibile renegotiated contract terms, Long was able to assemble an investment group to steer the company from near-bankruptcy toward profitability. With Homestore on track, Long decided a re-branding was necessary as "Homestore.com" had become "associated with fraud and a plummeting stock." Re-branded as Move, Inc., the company continued to gain more investors and increase its valuation from $19 million to $787 million.[4][6]

In late March 2009, along with Taylor Griffin and Jack Dennison, Long launched Sulgrave Partners LLC, a business advisory–consulting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C.[7][8] He is also chairman of NEOS Geosolutions, a privately held geosciences technology company, and chairman of Essence Group Holdings Corporation (EGHC), a privately held managed care and healthcare information technology business that develops and markets tools and technology supportive of more accountable, patient-centered healthcare.